Brenda Howard wore a bright pink button that perhaps said it all: “Bi, Poly, Switch — I know what I want.”
A ferocious and radical activist, Howard, who was bisexual, vehemently supported and participated in the antiwar and feminist movements, as well as the Gay Liberation Front and Gay Activists’ Alliance (she was the chair for several years). And Howard never went quietly. “Though she was humble, she could be loud when needed,” wrote bi activist and author Tom Limoncelli. Friends with many inside the Stonewall Inn the night of the uprising, Howard created a one-month Stonewall anniversary rally in July 1969. Then, one year after Stonewall, she and a committee planned Gay Pride Week and the Christopher Street Liberation Day Parade. Often called “The Mother of Pride,” Howard’s week and parade evolved into the annual New York City Pride march and Pride celebrations we now know around the world.
To assemble the parade and the first gay pride week, Howard and the committee met at the Oscar Wilde Memorial Bookshop, the first gay and lesbian bookstore in America, at 15 Christopher Street. With the bookstore’s mailing list, they got word out about the parade. Committee member L. Craig Schoonmaker suggested the word “Pride” for the event. “A lot of people were very repressed, they were conflicted internally, and didn’t know how to come out and be proud. That’s how the movement was most useful, because they thought, ‘Maybe I should be proud,’” Schoonmaker said in 2015.
The parade was scheduled for June 28, 1970. At first, only a relative few showed up for the parade’s 2 PM start time, set to travel 51 blocks, from Greenwich Village to Central Park. Police, there to protect the marchers, had to urge those who did show up to begin at ten after two. As if waiting to see if others would go first, people first trickled into the parade and then showed up in droves, growing louder and louder, eventually forming a thousands-strong mass of people 20 blocks long.
It was, to say the least, a success.
“[If] you needed some kind of help organizing some type of protest or something in social justice?” said Larry Nelson, Howard’s partner from 2000 until her death in 2005, who also gave her that aforementioned button. “All you had to do was call her and she’ll just say when and where.”
Throughout her lifetime, Howard was unapologetic about her sexuality, which included kink and polyamory, and worked for decades to increase understanding and visibility related to them. She also worked as a phone sex operator in the 1980s, praised by her boss Lisa Verruso for “how much fun Brenda had with phone fantasy. She was able to voice what people wanted,” and was “always up for something creative.” Howard co-chaired the leather contingent of the Second National March on Washington for Gay and Lesbian Rights in 1987. That year she also founded the New York Area Bisexual Network (NYABN), which sought to establish community and visibility for bisexual people in the New York area, and still exists today.
“For decades she was the voice on the [NYABN] recorded message that would tell bi people in NYC where events were happening,” Limoncelli wrote. “She returned thousands of messages left on the line.” In this and so many other ways, Howard created space for people maligned both within and outside the LGBTQ+ community to connect with others.
Howard was arrested while participating in her activist work multiple times. Her friend Marla Stevens remembered one particular jail time fondly. In 1991, Howard was protesting with ACT-UP in Atlanta because a lesbian staffer in the state attorney general’s office was fired due to Georgia’s sodomy laws. Stevens and Howard were thrown in jail, later “reading steamy novels aloud to the assembled grrlz and being as much of a pain in the rear as possible so they'd not want to hold us any longer than absolutely necessary,” Stevens wrote.
As a pioneer in the movement to advance bisexual inclusion, Howard was part of the delegation that worked to get “Bi” added to the title of the 1993 March on Washington so it would become “March on Washington for Lesbian, Gay, and Bi Equal Rights.” Beforehand, the march had only focused on gay and lesbian rights. Decrying the many myths surrounding bisexuality, pushing it into the spotlight, and rallying for its support in ongoing queer narratives was a strong part of Howard’s activism, though she also campaigned heavily for LGBTQ+ rights in general, as well as women’s rights, national healthcare, equal treatment for people of color, and rights for those affected by AIDS. “She was an in-your-face activist,” Nelson said in 2014. “She fought for anyone who had their rights trampled on.”
Howard passed away from colon cancer in 2005 — during Pride on June 28, 2005, to be exact, the 36th anniversary of the Stonewall Uprising. Nelson survived her and made a video to honor her longstanding bisexual pride. “Beside the fact that we were together and I am straight,” Nelson’s video said, “I know if she was alive, she would be here holding a sign saying ‘I’m #stillbisexual,’ so I will hold one up for her,” which he does. She was never ‘confused’ about her sexual identity, he goes on to say, and wanted others to acknowledge that she and those like her knew themselves, and that their sexuality was and should be seen as legitimate.
The year Howard passed, the Queens, New York branch of PFLAG initiated an award in her honor. Now in its 14th year, the “Brenda Howard Award” recognizes “an individual or organization that best exemplifies the vision, principals and community service exemplified by the late LGBT rights activist Brenda Howard and who serves as a positive and visible role model for the Bisexual Community.” At the time of its creation, it became the first award given by a major U.S. LGBTQ+ organization that was named after an out bisexual person.
Bi erasure is still all too often a problem faced by the LGBTQ+ community. But it’s important to remember because of people like Howard,“The Mother of Pride” herself, that a Pride celebration even exists.
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